It is common in retail situations to display goods or products for sale on shelving or other horizontal surfaces. Commonly, consumers will select desired products, typically removing the products closest to the front edge of the shelf. As products are removed in this fashion, the retailer will often reposition the remaining products towards the edge of the shelf (process known as "facing" the shelf) in order to provide a more pleasing appearance and avoid displacing or knocking over adjacent products if a consumer must reach towards the back of the shelf to obtain the desired product (particularly when product is relatively narrow).
The process of facing the shelf is labor intensive and costly for a retailer. Typically, when a shelf is faced, a clerk will reach above a row of products, towards the rear of the shelf, grasping one or more of the more rearwardly-placed products and pulling the products forward. This can require an awkward posture, particularly for very high or very low shelves, and also requires that there be sufficient "headroom" between the top of the products and the bottom of the shelf above (if any), thus wasting potential display area.
In addition to the problem of facing shelves, a retailer must often deal with the problem of products which have been displaced or knocked over by consumers. This problem is particularly acute in the case of products which are relatively tall and narrow, such as typical deodorant products. It has been found that such tall, narrow products are very often displaced from their desired row configuration or knocked over in the process &consumer selection, leaving a disarrayed appearance, creating difficulty in locating and selecting desired products and generally depressing sales. Returning the products to an orderly display following such displacement or knocking over is also labor intensive. This problem, particularly with tall, narrow products, can be partially ameliorated by packaging products in a container having a larger "footprint," so as to be less prone to displacement or knocking over. However, many manufacturers, especially in recent years, have been reluctant to provide such packaging for tall, narrow products because of the cost involved. In some cases, retailers attempt to reduce the magnitude of this problem by reducing the depth of a row of products on a shelf. This, however, means that less of the product can be kept in open-shelf stock, more must be maintained in the back room or warehouse stock (involving higher space costs), and the shelves must be re-stocked more often (involving higher labor costs) and on-shelf stock will be more often fully depleted (depressing sales).
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a system which facilitates facing of shelves, maximizes display area, assists in maintaining products in desired rows, and resists displacement or knocking over of products and avoids movement or falling of products off the front edge of the shelf, at least during facing, while permitting relatively deep rows of products to be maintained on shelves.